Turnus and the End of the Epicurean World

This chapter examines the role of atomic imagery in the final book of the Aeneid, particularly with respect to Turnus’ killing of the Trojan warrior Eumedes and his final defeat by Aeneas. It argues that a web of allusions to Lucretian atomism in each of those scenes connects Turnus’ opposition to Trojan colonization with the non-teleological worldview of atomism. Thus, Turnus’ defeat marks not just the rejection of Italian political power, but also of the Epicurean cosmology with which Turnus is allusively associated. However, a number of details linking Aeneas’ killing of Turnus to Turnus’ killing of Eumedes subtly undermine this victory for Rome’s imperial teleology, suggesting that the two heroes act in fundamentally similar ways, angrily inflicting violence upon their enemies to achieve a desired political outcome.

SOVIET PROVINCIAL SEAL ON THE POLISH-SOVIET TRUCE OF 1920

Based on the analysis of the reports of the provincial press on the negotiation process, the article considers the relations between Poland and Russia until the conclusion of a truce on October 12 and the preconditions for peace. A study of provincial newspapers, such as «Tverskaya Pravda», Vologda «Red North», Novosibirsk «Soviet Siberia» and Samara «Commune», shows that the Soviet press throughout this process formed completely opposite images of Russia and Poland. Soviet Russia was painted by a country seeking the peaceful construction of a new society, in the path of which the aggressive countries of capitalism stood. And the role of Poland in this confrontation was the most important. Poland sought to become a buffer between the West and Bolshevik Russia, to which it was actively pushed by France and other capitalist countries. Poland's behavior in the negotiation process was subject to fluctuations depending on the attitude of the allied countries to it and the situation on the fronts of the Polish-Soviet war. Only the successes of the Red Army and the fear of the final defeat of Poland made it and the allies more flexible in the negotiation process. In Soviet society, mistrust was affirmed not only of the peace proposals of the Polish side, but also of the agreements reached.

Securitization of Memory in the Pandemic Period: The Case of Russia and Latvia

The article examines the processes of memory securitization in the Russian Federation and Latvia during the coronavirus crisis. The key factor that allowed the authors to make such a statement about the problem was the temporary coincidence of the pandemic with the 75th anniversary of the final defeat of Nazi Germany and the so-called Victory Day. As a theoretical basis for the study, we use the constructivist understanding of security in order to study, with specific examples, how the threat in the form of a pandemic became a frame for securitization of memory. The authors identify the peculiarities of the articulating of security problems by political elites in two states with different memory regimes framed by the pandemic as an external factor.

“Though This Be Madness, Yet There Is Method In't”. The motif of feigned madness in William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV

Feigned madness is a motif that – with varying frequency – returns in literary texts. It is usually a carrier of important metaphors, such as: search for truth, escape from reality or conscious rejection of routine. Moreover, it seems to have an exceptional interpretative potential in dramas as it also symbolises a performative treatment of existence and an awareness of fiction which directs the poetics of the drama towards the meta-theatre. The author of this article considers these issues in relation to the titular characters of two dramatic masterpieces of world literature: Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello. Both characters, for various reasons, decide to hide their true psychological condition under the image of a madman, which, interestingly, confirms their sophistication and intellect. Putting on the mask of a madman guarantees the privilege of unpunished violation of conventions and established orders, hated by individuals such as Hamlet or Henry IV. This rebellion and emancipation lead to the final defeat of these characters, who, however, dominate over the others, since, unlike other actors who dispassionately play roles that have been imposed to them, they choose their roles, and – most importantly – they are aware that they are playing.

Conquering Caledonia

This chapter focuses on the influence of two ‘literary’ sources on eighteenth-century Highland travel: Tacitus’s Agricola and Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian. The historical analogy between Agricola’s victory at Mons Graupius and Culloden provided an ideological template for the final defeat of Jacobitism in 1746, explored here in travel accounts written by antiquarians, Hanoverian soldiers fighting in the Forty-Five, and post-war tourists like Bishop Pococke. The second part of the chapter argues that the popularity of Ossian after 1760 remapped Highland topography as a site of Caledonian resistance, stimulating enthusiasm for Gaelic culture which ironically coincided with official attempts to extirpate the language. Macpherson’s English ‘translations’ provided a new incentive for tourists to visit the Highlands, persuading them to collect fragments of ‘authentic’ Ossianic verse, and also inspiring a series of hallmarks sites for tourists in quest of ‘Fingalian topography’ like ‘Fingal’s Cave’ on Staffa and ‘Ossian’s Hall’ at Dunkeld.

CON EL MAZO DANDO. REPRESIÓN A LA PRENSA ESPAÑOLA TRAS EL DESASTRE

After the final defeat in the war against the United States, the Spanish government suspended constitutional rights from July 14th, 1898 to February 8th, 1899, afraid of internal uprising and the critical scrutiny of the press. For this reason, during this period two types of press control policies were implemented: preventive and repressive. This article focuses on the later approach and its operating mechanisms. Based on hemerographic analysis, this paper shows that the most frequent repressive methods were the closing of publications and court martials against publishers and journalists. These mechanisms did not always abide by pre-publication censorship. When independent from it, they acted more as a post-publication censorship mechanism. Likewise, following these punitive measures, publications covered the phenomenon and even protested the measures

Epilogue

After his final defeat, Napoleon was transported to the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena by the British, where he lived under permanent guard. Unlike the rest of his adult life, these years were ones of inaction and largely of immobility. Napoleon spent these years seeking control not over Europe, but over how history would remember him. It was the last chapter of his life but, more important, the first chapter of the longer, hugely contentious story of his historical significance. In 1820, Napoleon fell seriously ill, and on May 5, 1821, he died at fifty-one. The Epilogue explains how his legacy continued to shape European history in a massive and direct manner for decades.

The Sunni – Shiite escalation as a factor of the rise of the terrorist threat

The article is about to examine the effect of Sunni – Shiite partition on events that happen across the Middle East in the context of global terrorist threats. The article covers natural-economic realities of a number of middle-east countries with large Shiite population and with territories which subsume about two thirds of the all world explored reserves of hydrocarbons. The priority is given to the analysis of competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran, its ideological motifs and orientations, of their rivalry in proxy wars for influence in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is emphasized that even after the final defeat of ISIL political Islam will not take its departure from the regional worldview space and the influence of Sunni – Shiite factor in this process will remain.